A review by thereadingrambler
Time's Agent by Brenda Peynado

emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I will say upfront I'm not a huge fan of time travel books, but I was intrigued by the idea of the commodification of time. Tordotcom novellas have lately engaged with different facets of capitalism within the speculative fiction space. I was a bit disappointed with the most recent Samatar book, but Time's Agent had a more nuanced exploration through the same perspective of a family. The speculative element of this world is that the technology has been developed to discover, catalog, and preserve pocket worlds, many of which run faster or slower than "Earth Standard." This detail leads to the dissolution of Raquel's family through a horrible time accident, thrusting Raquel 40 years into the future where corporations have gotten ahold of technology to find and create these pocket worlds, thus allowing them to commodity time itself. This set-up was very well executed; Raquel, her wife, Marlena, and her daughter, Atalanta, are very real-feeling characters, and they feel like a family. The time jump into the future and the description of that reality were well done. It was at this point (50-60%) that, unfortunately, I started to lose my interest and belief in the world that Peynado created. The theming started to get a little too pedantic, and the plot very quickly jumped around and felt too disjointed. I think this book should've been maybe 50-75 pages longer to accomplish what Peynado was trying to do here. Overall, I would recommend this book for a pretty interesting conversation about what time means to our bodies, our lives, our welfare, and more, but be prepared for a bit of muddled plot in the last third. Despite that, I did find the ending satisfying and appropriately bittersweet.